A Different Nature

A Different Nature Mission Statement: A Sustained Explorations of New, Experimental Music and Sonic Art
A Different Nature is a curatorial program of genre-defying avant garde music and spoken word that champions historic and modern sound art and spotlights, new, emergent experimental music and audio art generally not heard anywhere else.
The program's format provides the space for deep listening to pieces not confined to pop song lengths and shows are generally focused on an artist, school of music or discipline, record label or art movement.

A Different Nature is a collaborative effort of the ADN Collective, who each curate a show every week on an informal rotating basis, or a group show, depending on the subject at hand.

A Different Nature was founded in the late Seventies by Richard Francis, who fearlessly championed new music and the unheard Avant Garde. His programs went into exhaustive detail on individual artists, labels and musical disciplines. He also spearheaded many important events on the air, such as the 2001 and 2008 Dada and Surrealism festivals that dominated the airwaves for days on end and involved many in the local avant garde community as well as many KBOO programmers.

Richard passed away in 2009 but it's our hope to carry on with his mission of introducing listeners to unheard new music as a collective of his collaborators and listeners.

This Monday evening we will dedicate our show to a very important experimantal music band: Decibel.

Formed in the early-mid 1970's in Mexico City, Decibel is considered to be (one of) the first experimental bands in Mexico. They have been together for around 40 years, and to celebrate we will be playing music from their last CD: Live, 2013.

Decibel's line-up has changed trough the years, having as its most consistent members Walter Schmidt and Carlos Robledo; other members include Alex Eisenring, Carlos Alvarado, and Arturo Meza, on its earliest incarnations.

We will also listen to a selection from their prolific discography, as well as some recordings from the 1st Encounter of Rock in Opposition in Mexico, in 1979.

Akira Ifukube was born on May 31, 1914 in Kushiro on the Japanese island of Hokkaido , the third son of a Shinto priest. Legend has it that Ifukube decided to become a composer at the age of 14 after hearing a radio performance of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring".

Tonight on A Different Nature we will listen to several avant garde peices inspired by children's stories and greek mythology.. mostly focuses on either electroacoustic or text-sound.. A few of the selections will be:
Bruit TTV's "Castafiore" based on the Adventures of Tintin comic "Les Bijoux de la Castafiore" (The Castafioria Emrald)
A selection or two from Sten Henson's "The John Carter Song Book" based on Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novels.
Marc Tremblay's "Cowboy Fiction"

Tonight on A Different Nature, dj Virginia Furr features the music by Lindsay Cooper (1951-2013). Lindsay Cooper was an English oboeist , bassoonist , and multi-instrumentalist, originally trained in the classical tradition, but who was best known for her work with Henry Cow, the English avant rock band. She was also a co-founder of the Feminist Improvising Group; collaborated with many musicians ,including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter; and was a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel, and David Thomas and the Pedestrians.

Dr. Zomb of Dr. Zomb's Stereo Obscura and Rich of Radio Lost and Found interview Negativland founding member Mark Hosler.
Mark called in all the way from North Carolina to discuss Negativland history, their upcoming show in Portland on the 29th, their upcoming new album It's All In Your Head and other mysteries.

This time on A Different Nature, we delve into the program's past, and play gems from founder Richard Francis' own record collection. It's KBOO's spring membership drive, so A Different Nature listeners will have the opportunity to pledge their support for the station during the program. We have special thank-you gifts to offer new or renewing members: copies of the CD "Hendrix Uncovered: New Music Inspired by Jimi Hendrix", donated by March Music Moderne & Bob Priest.

For forty years, the San Francisco Avant-Garde band The Residents have basked in relative obscurity, much of it self-imposed. Their earliest modus operandi had them creating works under their 'theory of obscurity', first coined by N. Senada, who may or may not be an actual person. One aspect of the theory is that a work is created with the intent of never releasing a work until every participant has forgotten about it - or something like that.

Another aspect of the Residents is that they've kept their real identity a secret for many decades, with a few people speaking on their behalf in a business capacity who may or may not be Residents themselves.. Hmmm..

We did, however, manage to get Homer Flynn, The Resident's creative director and visual Major Domo on the phone, while he was, uh, helping the band on the Eastern leg of their Wonder of Weird 40th Anniversary tour.

Homer was more than generous with his time and lots of questions get answered, including a long-time rumour around KBOO's history.

Kathy, Dr Zomb & Rolf interviewed Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots for A DIFFERENT NATURE. We conducted the interview at the Doug Fir a couple hours before they performed and aired it on ADN that night. Also thanks to Crystal for digital audio editing before the interview aired.

Antonio Russek's musical activities have been linked from its beginnings to theatre performance, sound design for art galleries and museums, videoart, and instalations, cinematography, dance, sound sculpture and interactive art.

With more than one hundred compositions on his catalogue, Russek is pioneer of Arte Sonoro, defining experimental music in Mexico.

An electracoustic expert, has colaborated with many artists. In 1979 creates CIIMM (Centro Independiente de Investigaion Musical y Multimedia).

On A Different Nature, we listened to Musica del Desierto, comissioned by the Desert Museum of Coahuila, as well as the composition Ohtzalan, included on the CD electroacoustic music from Latin America.

We ended the show with a performance of Danza Minima for solo dance by Evoé Sotelo, during Fotografest08, a festival of dance, photography, electronic media and video, at La Casona Spencer, Cuernavaca Morelos, Oct. 24th, 2008.

On our recent call-in show, one thing listeners asked for was more music by local Portland artists. This week on A Different Nature we will hear electro-acoustic music from composer Matt Marble, unique instrument builder RP Collier, and rare cassette tapes from the mid-1980s by Phyllyp Vernacular. host: Andy Hosch

all selections on this evening's program are self-released by the artists.

Phyllyp Vernacular, from Cognitive Dissonance :

"The Dipthongs of Ancient Dialects" (9:32)

-- mic break --

Matt Marble, from Folding Googles:

"Ezekiel's Vision" (9:22)

"Mood Ring" (0:26) (9:22)

"Through the Stars" (5:57)

"Yeats' Fire" (4:21)

"Did you see the lightning bugs?" (7:44)

listen to more music from Matt Marble at https://soundcloud.com/mattmarble

-- mic break --

Phyllyp Vernacular (aka Brian Magill), from Cognitive Dissonance :

"The Drowned World" (8:44)

"Industrial Frictions" (3:44)

"Schlopbobo Mukma" (5:00)

Phyllyp Vernacular (aka Brian Magill), from The Red Bag :

"Social Fabric" (4:46)

"Eye Like A Camera" (5:02)

more recently, Brian Magill has recorded under the name 'Fervent Torpor' listen here:

Back in May, we had a listener call-in show to see what our audience wanted to hear and one suggestion was electronic music that isn't musique concrete. So thats what I pulled together for the show... during the show the guy who suggested it called and although he was enjoying the show, he said he actually didn't mean it to be interpreted so narrowly. The ADN collective basically has a list on all of our computers of the listener requests and I picked this one as I knew I had the material to do it as it was written. But I would like to honor the larger scope of this listener's vision and so we will hopefully expand upon the idea in the weeks and months to come... Thanks to the listener for his suggestion as well as his call last night! Here's what I played:

20.08.2008 at 20:08 the roof of the norwegian national opera & ballet (D)

Das Wohltemperierte Spunk

Rune Grammofon

Spunk

20.01.2001 at 20:01 emanuel vigeland mausoleum (B-flat)

Das Wohltemperierte Spunk

Rune Grammofon

Spunk

20.11.2011 at 20:11 gamle aker church (A-flat)

Das Wohltemperierte Spunk

Rune Grammofon

Tonight we listened to excerpts from Das Wohltemperierte SPUNK, a 6-Cd set the documents twelve concerts performed by the Norwegian improvasational quartet Spunk over the last 12 years, each concert a drone based around a single tone from the 12-tone scale.

Mark Applebaum (b. 1967, Chicago) is Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia with notable premieres at the Darmstadt summer sessions. He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Fromm Foundation, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Vienna Modern Festival, Antwerp’s Champ D’Action, Festival ADEvantgarde in Munich, Zeitgeist, MANUFACTURE (Tokyo), the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Jerome Foundation, and the American Composers Forum, among others. In 1997 Applebaum received the American Music Center’s Stephen Albert Award and an artist residency fellowship at the Villa Montalvo artist colony in Northern California.

Applebaum is also active as a jazz pianist and builds electroacoustic instruments out of junk, hardware, and found objects for use as both compositional and improvisational tools. His music can be heard on recordings on the Innova, Tzadik, Capstone, and SEAMUS labels. Prior to his current appointment, he taught at UCSD, Mississippi State University, and Carleton College. Additional information is available at www.markapplebaum.com.

10 pm Dr Zomb is leaving the building and now DJ Rolf is at the controls.

10:00 - 10:24 is a collage of different nature sounds taken off Soundsnap.. a lot of a single cricket sound and other stuff that goes in and out of it.. this piece was constructed in mid-April 2013 exclusively for this earth day.. a steady beat of crickets, and a slow buildup of other sounds.. (monkeys, elephants, crows and birds) that dies down again so that the crickets once more are all that can be heard.

10:24 pm - an excerpt from Jon Hartog's "Oregon Landscapes" CD, of great horned owls and a western screech owl. Hartog is a Portland resident who travels around the Pacific Northwest recording natural sounds...

10:26 We start mixing in some bird and cricket noises, as ealry morning creeps early on the owls

10:32 Beginning of a long peice I put together last week from stuff I downloaded from Soundsnap.. I can't remember what is on this, except it's 38 minutes long...

11:10 A short bit of a SilverBacked Jackal, from a CD called "Animals of Africa" onn the Nonesuch Explorer Series, mixed in with..

11:10 the sound of a thunderstorm, from a CD called Thunderstorm from Rykodisc's The Atomsphere Collection..

11:12 threw in some hippos from the Animals of Africa CD

11:15 A another of my recent Soundsnap nature collages, which I did last week for this show... this one has running water as the central motive... and some creature that periodically splashes in it, and of course the omnipresent crickets...

11:33 Let's throw in some elk mating rituals from a Moon Trailway Music CD...

11:41 St Mary's Cacophony gets mixed in .. from a disc called Seabird Island recorded by Lang Elliot..

11:44 Another collage from an earlier Earth Day.. have no idea what's on this, but it sounds like it was one of those let's try to throw as many different nature sounds as one can find... mostly sounds were taken from soundsnap...

11:59 A half hour of more birds and crickets!! Another collage, done last week for this show...

12:29 Chickdee Epilogue.. from John Hartog's An Early Monring Chorus Starring the American Robin, recorded at Murderer's Creek, Grant County, Oregon..

12:33 Another of my recent nature collages from sounds downloaded from the internet.. to take us to near the end of the show....more crickets!!!

12:59 Winds Across the Tundra, another CD from Bernie Krause.. and it's 1 am so I'm going home to listen to the rest of the show...

1:00 am and all's well... and daniel is here til 4:00 am /////

we will now move into a little more free-form, as in: don't expect to see every minute of time chronicled anymore...but we will keep you up to date somewhat on what we're playing, or rather--where we're going. such as--

THE NORTHWEST

1:20ish...the Oregon Coast. i'll see if i can give you a trip to our familiar coast, our corner of Planet Earth--

SONGS OF THE SOUTHERN HUMPBACK WHALES (ok, i know. but we have whales along our coast, so radio takes liberties to create your dream soundtrack...you're asleep now anyway, right?) recorded by Ross Isaacs, on KADO records

OCEAN MIST - recorded at Cape Falcon, OR ...and then BLACK OYSTERCATCHER - recorded at Arch Cape rocks..both recorded by John Hartog --from his bizarrely titled CD "Oregon Soundscapes" (?!)

then

2:00 am--we move over the Coast Range Mts and jump over to the south fork of the Crooked River--the CD Streamside Morning Light also recorded by John Hartog (this is when you heard our good old familiar "torTEEEto" birds, as my cousins and i used to call them)

2:33 am--we hear this cool thing from NASA: "the Earth singing like a whale" (this was sent to us just now from The Sweetheart of The Valley" in Corvallis, and is unfortunately only about 30 seconds long--if you missed it and want to hear it again, call us in the KBOO studios - 503-231-8187 -- and i'll play it again around 3:00 am) -- this was recorded by 2 Storm Probe satellites investigating the famous Van Allen belts, intense radiation zones that surround the Earth like a doughnut. The Storm Probes, just launched last month, are mapping the density of charged particles. The "whale song" is an audio rendering of radio waves caused by the two Van Allen belts, inner and outer, and captured by the probes. You can't actually hear the audio in space, of course, but the radio waves-- known as "chorus"-- are real. Ham radio operators have been hearing chorus in the background for years, but there's never been a recording this clear until now.

LIKE WE SAID--CALL US AT 503-231-8187 IF YOU WANT US TO PLAY IT AGAIN AT 3:00 AM, OR AGAIN AT 4:00 AM.. for that matter, call us anyway, if you're really still up (we just heard from Deborah in Boston, on her way to the Blue Hills to watch the sun rise over the ocean) and tell us what you think...

anyway. from 2:34 to 3:00 am, we heard from Andy Hosch's MALHEUR -- recorded at the Buena Vista overlook in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, from a series bizarrely titled "Oregon Soundscapes #1" (!?)

still in our corner of the planet--

3:00 am -- tree and field crickets, John Hartog of SE Portland again (By the way: THANK YOU, JOHN! John sent these recordings of his to KBOO just for this special EARTH DAY broadcast. In his words: Recorded in high quality digital stereo with specialized soundscape microphones. Every care was taken to present periods of time without noticeable human-caused noise.")

3:33 - the otherworldly sounds of the Weddell seals under the water (under the ice) in Antarctica--the seals that, as Werner Herzog put it in his INCREDIBLE film "Encounters At The End Of The World", sound like "Peenk Fuloyd" -- again from Bernie Krause's Wild Sanctuary series, recorded by Douglas Quin. The CD is just called "Antarctica"...beautiful....

3:53 - Dolphin Medley from "Tropical Lagoon" in the "echoes of nature" series on LaserLight

3:58 - from Madagascar, by Douglas Quin (Wild Sanctuary series)

4:00 space again--we hear this cool thing from NASA: "the Earth singing like a whale" (this was sent to us just now from The Sweetheart of The Valley" in Corvallis, and is unfortunately only about 30 seconds long--if you missed it and want to hear it again, call us in the KBOO studios - 503-231-8187 -- and i'll play it again around 3:00 am) -- this was recorded by 2 Storm Probe satellites investigating the famous Van Allen belts, intense radiation zones that surround the Earth like a doughnut. The Storm Probes, just launched last month, are mapping the density of charged particles. The "whale song" is an audio rendering of radio waves caused by the two Van Allen belts, inner and outer, and captured by the probes. You can't actually hear the audio in space, of course, but the radio waves-- known as "chorus"-- are real. Ham radio operators have been hearing chorus in the background for years, but there's never been a recording this clear until now.

4:01 --ANDY HOSCH in the house

In the tenth hour of our program, we hear recordings of Derek Ecklund. (times are approximate) Derek has been a guest on A Different Nature, with his environmental recordings and also his electronic music. Check out Derek's Columbia RiverSoundMap project: http://www.soundmaps.net/columbiariversoundmap/

In the eleventh hour of our program, we travel south, to the Northern Territory of Australia and Kakadu Billabong, recorded by Les Gilbertin 1987. "It is dawn at a remote and beautiful Nourlangie Creek billabong in Australia's Kakadu National Park ...Unknowingly. nature is about to conspire with modern technology to produce a remarkable recording of an inspiring and precuious environment in all its teeming diversity" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Gilbert

Kakadu Billabong began at 6:12 AM

....and as per listener request, we segued at 5:46 to ocean sounds -specifically, an excerpt from "Ocean Dreams" part of the Wild Sanctuary series, recorded by Bernie Krause along the Big Sur coast of California. This in turn segued (at 5:57) into another excerpt from Derek Ecklund's recording at OM Beach, in Karnataka, India

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In the twelfth and final hour of our program, we hear a dawn chorus of birds recorded near the Malheur National Wildlife Refugein South-Eastern Oregon. I made this recording in April, 1999 outside the Hotel Diamond, just east of Malheur and north of Steen's Mountain. Dawn at Diamond begins at 6:09 AM

This week's host Dr. Zomb was joined in the air room by Mitchell Brown (aka Professor Cantaloupe) of Melon Expander Records, a label of experimental music. Based in L.A., he runs the label, creates his own music and does two different radio shows himself on KXLU 88.9 FM, "The Kids are Allright" 6-7 pm and "Glossolalia" 10-11 pm on Wed. nights. He also is on Dublab international radio. Contact him at https://cantaloupe@dublab.com. Mitchell played selections from past and upcoming releases on the label including some of his own work. Thanks to local musician Tim Alexander for facilitating this visit!

The first 2 hours were dedicated to 4 compositions --4 Portland area composers offering their piece in tribute to or inspired by Pandit Pran Nath

1. Air Objects by John Berendzen 24:30

2. Planetary Sine Wave Organ by Derek Ecklund 30:30

3. Referent by Scott Goodwin 24:00

4. Raindrop Garden by Matt Carlson 10:00

The last hour of the broadcast was indeed very special, even historic, as Michael Stirling sang/performed a raga live in the KBOO studios with accompaniment from Derek Ecklund and Kelly Jennings, each playing a tambura, and Aran Adams on tablas.

Here's what Michael had to say about this raga: "i dedicate my offering to Shamsudin Faridi Desai, a music family friend from Dehli who passed on 8/16 - one of the last living masters of the Binkar in the tradition of Mian Bande Ali Khan - the great Binkar of the Kirana tradition. He and sarangi virtuoso and Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana, Ustad Hafizullah Khan were inspiriations and their classical music will never be duplicated - as Terry Riley said of Faridi, a Ghandarva!

The first 2 hours were dedicated to 4 compositions --4 Portland area composers offering their piece in tribute to or inspired by Pandit Pran Nath

1. Air Objects by John Berendzen 24:30

2. Planetary Sine Wave Organ by Derek Ecklund 30:30

3. Referent by Scott Goodwin 24:00

4. Raindrop Garden by Matt Carlson 10:00

The last hour of the broadcast was indeed very special, even historic, as Michael Stirling sang/performed a raga live in the KBOO studios with accompaniment from Derek Ecklund and Kelly Jennings, each playing a tambura, and Aran Adams on tablas.

Here's what Michael had to say about this raga: "i dedicate my offering to Shamsudin Faridi Desai, a music family friend from Dehli who passed on 8/16 - one of the last living masters of the Binkar in the tradition of Mian Bande Ali Khan - the great Binkar of the Kirana tradition. He and sarangi virtuoso and Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana, Ustad Hafizullah Khan were inspiriations and their classical music will never be duplicated - as Terry Riley said of Faridi, a Ghandarva!

Program submission forms are available at the station, 20 SE 8th Ave. You can also call Program Director Chris Merrick at (503) 231-8032. This is assuming you've already gone through volunteer orientation and FCC training....